This is a story I wrote while still in the hospital. I’ve done nothing to it except copy/paste from my catalog of stories. I was on an assortment of meds so I’ll apologize ahead of time if this feels written differently or contains mistakes. I wanted to keep it authentic to how it was written in the moment.
On May 22, 2021, while riding my motorcycle, I was hospitalized after being hit head-on by a car crossing the double yellow line. In order to better understand the following story, you need to know the full extent of what had me immobilized in a hospital bed. Open fracture of left tibia. Open fracture of left fibula. Open fracture of left femur. Closed fracture of the left radius. Closed fracture of the right tibial plateau. Right arm left unharmed. Yeah, so I had toothpicks for bones and I was unable to move beyond shuffling around my bed. I was discharged after almost a month in the hospital, but I wasn’t done. About a month later, I had a bone infection set up shop in my lower leg. I had to be immediately shipped to a hospital better equipped to deal with my situation. I eventually wound up at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. That was quite an amazing place… but… that’s not what I’m here to share.
What eased my pain was the facility’s nursing staff. OSUWMC being what it was, meant that it was full of young, aspiring nurses. My mental and physical state being what it was, having them around helped keep me upbeat. All of them were kind, sweet and some were very easy on the eyes. I was lucky enough to have one of the best looking nurses on the floor. Her name was Melissa. She was young, attractive, physically fit, and smart. If I had to be all jacked up and basically strapped to a hospital bed, I couldn’t have asked for a better caregiver. After a few encounters, I realized that while Melissa was all those things, she was also a little flighty, but I didn’t mind. I felt that there were a whole lot of other things that she could have been that were worse. At the end of the day, she did her job and I always felt taken care of.
Since the day I arrived at their medical facility, they had an IV stuck in my right arm. You know, the one good appendage I had left. Now with one functional extremity, you would think the staff would consider where to place the IV so that it would allow for range of movement. Nope. Stuck it right inside the bend of my elbow resulting in my arm being almost completely useless. Because the tiny catheter crossed where my arm bent, it would easily back its way out if I moved my arm, even with the whole thing taped in place.
I learned about something called a midline, which is a multi-use tube that can be fed into my blood vessel and used for saline drips as well as extracting blood. Did they go this route? Hell no, that wasn’t an option for some magical reason. So in addition to the IV needle, my good arm also received multiple stabs each day in order to draw blood for testing. As expected, my IV eventually blew out. Yes, that meant another stab. Unfortunately the veins in my good arm were in short supply from all the previous blood draws.
After Melissa discovered my blow-out, she gathered all her tools to stick me again. She searched for quite some time until one was located on the top of my hand, to which I commented that it would continue to prevent the use of my one good hand and would likely result in another blowout because of its position.
An alternate location was agreed on. Low and behold, she found a large vessel right at the top of my forearm. It felt perfect to her and since it was in the middle of my arm, I could maintain full use of my limb. Moments later, she had the 20 gauge needle stuck in place and the saline solution was flowing freely.
Since I was due for my dose of dilaudid, which was given through the IV, she went ahead and attached the opioid-filled syringe to the feeder line that was just above the injection site. Melissa then finished threading the needle into my vein and securing everything.
Now if you’ve had an IV lately, you know the first thing they lay over the injection site is a big clear bandage that has a super grip. After that, they lay additional super grip tape around the hose in order to reinforce the durability/stability of the placement.
Once everything was secured in place, Melissa gathered up the packaging, extra gauze and random bits so they could be discarded. As she stood up to leave, she noticed the dilaudid syringe still at rest on my arm. She grabbed the syringe so she could dispose of it on her way out.
I felt my arm jerk, but before I could look at what caused it, I heard my girl gasp. Her reaction turned my attention immediately to her, but I saw that she was staring at the arm I had just felt involuntarily move. When my eyes made it back around, I saw what had happened. Melissa had never delivered the medicine, so she never removed the syringe. It was still attached to the adapter on my main line. When she walked off with it in her hand, she ripped the security tape, adhesive pad, and catheter out of my arm all at once. When she turned around, the look on her face told us both she already knew what had happened. She looked at the blood coming from my arm, then at the plumbing in her hands that had once prevented that blood from leaving my body. I could tell she felt humiliated, but she played it off pretty well. She cleaned up the area, got the bleeding to stop and then resigned herself to the fact that she just blew out the last good vein in my arm.
Two IV teams and an ultrasound machine specialist later, they were able to find a mid-line on the inside of my bicep… Which is what they should have done to start with.
It may have been a coincidence, but Melissa was never assigned to my room after that day. Oddly enough, her ripping it out was not as painful as the countless sticks they had to perform to find a new vein.
Off The Rails 